A note from the editors

Together with the XVII World Water Congress (WWC) in Daegu, Korea, this special issue of Water International is the capstone of over a year of activities commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA). With a goal of exploring the past, present and future of the water sector, and the IWRA’s role in it, the programme has included interviews and conversations with water leaders, webinars and COP26 events, all of which can be found on the IWRA website (iwra.org).

As its first president, the visionary Ven Te Chow, a world-renowned Professor of Hydraulic Engineering at the University of Illinois (USA), set out IWRA’s vision and guiding principles, as found in the ‘Words from the pages of Water International of the first 15 IWRA presidents’ preceding this editorial. Profesor Chow guided the fledgling organization from 1972 to the end of the decade.

The first WWC was held in Chicago, Illinois, USA, on 24–28 September 1973, fewer than two years after the IWRA’s founding, with a theme of ‘Importance and Problems of Water in the Human Environment in Modern Times’. The human environment was the theme of the first United Nations (UN) conference on the environment in 1972, and the IWRA from the very beginning engaged in global dialogue on timely issues. The first WWC gathered participants from over 62 countries and proposed developing an international, interdisciplinary, cooperative and coordinated approach to water resources. The 2nd WWC was held in Delhi, India, and was attended by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This year IWRA hosted its 17th WWC, and the approach proposed and maintained from its very beginning has proven to be prescient in that global, interdisciplinary and collaborative solutions have never been more critical.

This issue builds on the themes of the 50th anniversary themes of past, present and future of both the water sector and IWRA, and it offers research and review articles, essays and commentaries. The research article is by scholar-practitioner Carolyn Johns on the applicability of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Water Governance Indicators (Akhmouch et al., 2018) to the North American Great Lakes. We will have more on these indicators and how to measure their impact early in 2022 in another special issue being organized by the OECD.

Two review articles on critical issue domains going forward are led by young scholars: Anita Milman et al. on the future of piped water, and Rosario Sanchez et al. on groundwater security on the US–Mexico border. A mark of one big change between now and a half century ago is that all these lead authors are women, as are two of the four editors of this issue. In the early years, the pathbreaking (in many ways) Malin Falkenmark was the only woman on the executive board, and one of the few women leaders in the water sector (Falkenmark, 2011, 2021).

We then have two extensive reviews by teams of global practitioners: Petit et al. surveying approaches proposed to address the nearly universally critical overdraft of groundwater in the world’s agricultural sector, and Skoulikaris et al. on the status of transboundary aquifers in South Eastern Europe with insights from the implementation European Union’s (EU) Water Framework Directive.

The essays feature reflections of more senior members of the water sector on where we have been and the implications for the future. Neil Grigg looks at the progress of water research since 1971 and asks the provocative question as to whether it has made any difference. Patricia Wouters and Dan Tarlock, and then Joseph Dellapenna, take long views of international water law and governance. Jacques Ganoulis proposes a new way of looking at hydro-governance, based on some ancient perspectives. William Jones takes us on a wild ride through his personal experiences with technologies and water over the past 50 years, leaving us with thoughts for our uncertain future. Henning Bjornlund and his colleagues show us how they are seeking to change the postcolonial paradigm on agricultural water management in Africa.

The five commentaries span a wide range and include both young and seasoned members of the water community. Salman Salman, who has twice won the award for Water International’s best paper of the year for his insightful articles on critical contemporary issues of international law, asks whether the IWRA could play a role in resolving water conflicts, to which Rabi Mohtar responds, calling for greater adoption of an integrated systems approach. Slobodan Simonovic claims that the IWRA, and Water International in particular, have actually abandoned the systems approach that was once at its core. Kevin Wheeler and Hussam Hussein raise a critical question for collaborative international research: Can international collaboration on water research align with the IWRA’s core value of being politically neutral in the face of growing academic water nationalism?

Our final commentary, assembled by Bassel Daher, summarizes the many and varied activities of the IWRA’s taskforces. These taskforces are a recent addition to the IWRA’s repertoire, but we expect them to grow and develop in coming years.

The issue closes with a list of the recently elected members of the executive board that will take IWRA into its second century. Our congratulations go to them all.

As a final note, we would like to pay tribute to the memory of a number of prominent former executive board members who have passed away in the final year of IWRA’s first half century: Viktor Dukhovny, Janusz Kindler, Ramón Llamas, Yahia Abdel Mageed and Yutaka Takahasi. They all contributed to the world’s knowledge of water in numerous ways and leave a monumental legacy.

We hope that you will enjoy this 50th anniversary special issue of Water International. We also hope that the contents give you much food for thought and reflection, and we welcome your own contributions both to the discussions featured here and to other unique and timely ideas and insights. Most of all, we hope you will join us in raising awareness of the issues raised and in moving both the water sector and IWRA into a second half-century of hope and accomplishment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).